The New Yorker examines the President’s latest budget and find it “represents a major dodge on climate change.” Hence columnist Ryan Lizza poses the headline question, “Has Obama already given up on climate change?” Sure Obama has been talking a good game on climate in the second inaugural address and State of the Union : But the budget released this week makes it clear that Obama’s surprising appeal to Congress was an empty piece of rhetoric.

Fox News hosts have been dismissing the effects of the across-the-board government spending cuts known as sequestration, claiming that “nothing is happening” following the cuts taking effect. But the cuts are already having negative economic consequences that will continue unless the cuts are replaced

Despite an appeal Thursday by 15 right-wing Republican senators for President Barack Obama to withdraw the nomination of Chuck Hagel as his next defence secretary, the former Republican senator from Nebraska appears virtually certain to be confirmed as Pentagon chief by the full Senate next week. The fact that his arch-foes – almost all of

Right-wing media outlets have advanced a number of myths regarding automatic across-the-board spending cuts — commonly called the sequester — in order to hide the facts behind an inherently harmful economic policy. Will The Sequester Hurt Economic Growth? Will The Sequester Help The Economy?

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has issued a press release expressing concern over the ”inap­pro­pri­ate invo­ca­tions of Hitler, Nazis, and gen­eral Holo­caust imagery” in debates about gun violence after the Sandy Hook shooting. In a related blog post, the ADL wrote : “These com­par­isons, made by polit­i­cal pun­dits on national news pro­grams as well by oth­ers out­side pol­i­tics, are not only mis­placed and offen­sive, rely­ing on fac­tu­ally incor­rect premises and exag­ger­a­tions, but also deflect atten­tion away from an impor­tant national discussion.” Some of their examples of this type of imagery include: The Drudge Report, under the headline “White House Threatens ‘Executive Orders’ on Guns,” featured photos of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin (Jan

The editorial boards of two newspapers owned by oil tycoon Philip Anschutz re-endorsed the controversial Keystone XL (KXL) Pipeline project days after Nebraska’s Governor approved a new route for the pipeline, but neither paper acknowledged the continued environmental danger of the project and both exaggerated the project’s potential for job creation and consumer benefits. The editorial boards of the Colorado Springs Gazette and The Oklahoman claimed that the Obama administration should approve the pipeline now that TransCanada — the corporation seeking to build the pipeline — has rerouted the project because it won’t have a negative environmental impact. But in fact, the risk of a spill over environmentally sensitive areas remains

Fox News Sunday will host a retired general with a record of Islamophobic comments that drew criticism from President George W. Bush to provide “expert” commentary on the recent decision to allow women in the armed forces to serve in combat roles. According to a promotion that ran on Fox News, retired Lt.

In their rush to frame a federal appellate court opinion as a personal rebuke of President Obama, Fox News host Megyn Kelly and frequent guest Jay Sekulow misrepresented the truly radical and unprecedented nature of a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on presidential recess appointments. Although Kelly and Sekulow erroneously reported that the opinion only affects Obama’s recess appointment of members to the National Labor Relations Board, it actually casts doubt on hundreds of presidential appointments and subsequent actions since the 1940s

The Wall Street Journal advised Republicans to insist on certain Medicare and Social Security cuts — such as raising the Medicare eligibility age and cutting future Social Security benefits — as part of a deficit reduction deal with Democrats. But the Journal’s proposals would harm retirees without providing much savings to the federal government. WSJ Proposes Raising The Medicare Eligibility Age To 67 WSJ : If GOP Can’t Enact The Paul Ryan Model, Raise The Medicare Eligibility Age.

The United States government is killing people. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia are all being pounded by missiles launched from US drones, and though the missiles are ostensibly targeted against terrorists, it seems possible that hundreds of civilians have been killed in the crossfire. Neither party’s nominee will debate this issue.

(Photo: AP) Progressive foreign policy group the Truman National Security Project today released a new ad that features several 9/11-era veterans questioning whether Mitt Romney is qualified to be commander-in-chief. The one minute video first highlights Romney’s various foreign policy fumbles throughout the campaign, including his confusing Afghanistan policy, his failure to mention the war there and commemorate U.S.

The 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon On the eve of the eleventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Danielle Pletka, vice-president for foreign and defense policy studies at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, writes, “ It’s time to lay waste to a special calumny that has gained prominence and entered the main stream from the fringes where it once resided: The notion of American guilt.” The notion that U.S. foreign policy shapes “invitations” for terrorists to attack on our soil — and the concomitant idea that if we had no foreign policy, there would be no attacks – is entirely mindless . It’s time to put Ron Paul, truthers, blowbackers, and all the adherents of such ideas back where they belong… on the fringes of American life, wearing tin foil hats, writing irate letters to the White House, exchanging newsletters, and building shelters in their moms’ basements

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here. I used to be a serious Republican, moderate and business-oriented, who planned for a public-service career in Republican politics. But I am a Republican no longer.

As the Democratic Party convenes in Charlotte, President Obama faces a complex challenge: how to craft an effective campaign message given a weak economy, his own record and his half-hidden commitments. At first glance, one might think, it should be easy.

Pentagon spokesman George Little Defense Department spokesman George Little told reporters today at the Pentagon that the Navy SEAL who authored the book documenting the raid that killed Osama bin Laden contains classified information. The book, titled “No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden,” has received criticism from government officials and current and former servicemembers because the author, writing under the pseudonym Mark Owen, did not submit the manuscript for pre-clearance.

The Right’s propaganda machine has been on overdrive during the Republican National Convention trying desperately to repackage the Romney-Ryan team as “compassionate conservatives.” But there is a curious counterpoint to the nonsense we’ve heard from the podium coming from another slice of the Right’s noise machine—an emphasis on how scary a second Obama term would be.

A national political convention is the first real chance for a political party to introduce its ideas and leaders to the country. Even though this election has been gearing up for 18 months, it’s only around now that Americans start paying attention

I am the only Black woman at my job. Of course, this means me and my massive hair stick out that much more, especially when the last Black woman to work here wore her hair flat-ironed mercilessly straight. I’ve been here for almost two years and the hair questions have not stopped

If you’ve happened upon any tabloid media over the past week, you’ve likely seen the scowling, scolding headlines about Prince Harry’s “wild night in Vegas.” The shock and awe directed toward the now 27-year-old son of Princess Di was not necessarily about his “wild night,” however, but directed in particular towards photos leaked by some of his comrades during a night of nude billiards. Of course, it was such a scandal—Harry’s whole life seems to be about having the absolute minimum amount of decorum expected of him as a royal — but one can imagine the collective gasp heard ’round Buckingham Palace when his naked butt landed on the Internet.

The radical right organized four separate anti-Obama hate-fests in Tampa, as they mobilized for an all out assault on Barack Obama. This was pretty scary stuff. And AlterNet was there to record the fantasies and the paranoia. AlterNet’s team –with Adele Stan at the helm, along with Peter Montgomery and Arun Gupta– has been in the middle of the action in Florida, documenting the dark words of Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and more, as the all-star team of wing nuttery rallied the faithful to defeat Obama.

Recently, climate change has been the Voldemort of the Obama Administration: ”The Threat-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.” In January, the President omitted any discussion of climate change from his State of the Union address , since, what really does the gravest threat to Americans and indeed all homo “sapiens” have to do with the state of the union? Then the White House edited climate change from Obama’s Earth Day 2012 proclamation

Politics is an elaborate chess match, and in St, Petersburg one small strike was staged against the Republican National convention on Aug. 26 that revealed the thrust of President Obama’s 2012 re-election strategy

Methane is 21 times more heat-trapping that carbon dioxide.” If you’re a frequent reader of environmental websites, no doubt you’ve seen some version of that sentence many times. The “twenty-times” figure is the most common way of explaining how methane (or CH4, or uncombusted natural gas) reacts in the atmosphere.

The following excerpt is from Power from the People: How to Organize, Finance, and Launch Local Energy Projects by Greg Pahl, published by Chelsea Green . This book rests an optimistic message on a pessimistic premise. The sobering underlying thesis is that human civilization is already in big trouble—both ecologically and economically. And things are set to get much worse.

Billionaire corporate interests and other well financed anti-labor forces are waging a major drive to stifle the political voice of workers and their unions in California that is certain to spread nationwide if not stopped – and stopped now. At issue is a highly deceptive measure, Proposition 32, on the state’s November election ballot, that its anti-labor sponsors label as an even-handed attempt to limit campaign spending

When you think about the terrible effects of climate change, I bet you picture droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes, which makes sense — climate change is causing weather patterns to go absolutely crazy. But the crazy weather leads to other consequences that we often don’t think about when we hear the globe is warming up.